


By the Sword or Not at All

by poppyseedheart



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: (but only sort of) - Freeform, A whole lot of beautiful landscapes and sitting by the fire - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Achievement Hunter Kings, Curses, Dragons, F/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 05:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16361825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poppyseedheart/pseuds/poppyseedheart
Summary: "Lindsay’s curse is almost definitely not unbreakable, and she has plans to prove it."A servant in the castle, Lindsay has always known that she was cursed to lose every fight she got into. With the help of some friends and a very ambitious plan, she sets off to defeat a dragon and break her curse once and for all....It might not bequitethat simple, though.





	By the Sword or Not at All

**Author's Note:**

> Woohoo, Kings Big Bang! Hey friends, I wrote a thing after a while of not writing a whole lot of things. I had some rough writer's block, and this fic helped unstick a lot of it. I hope you have fun reading the tales of Lindsay and her lighthearted determination, and that you're all doing well. First time in this verse, so fingers crossed I did it justice.
> 
> Much love to the mods of this big bang, too!! It's my 4th bb across a few fandoms (I think) and they're always so fun, and a labor of love to put on. 
> 
> Enjoy! <3

Lindsay’s curse is almost definitely not unbreakable, and she has plans to prove it.

She’s been marching for almost an hour, already a good few miles from the castle by the time Michael catches up to her. “Lindsay,” he pants. He’d been running. She smiles. “You can’t be seriously considering this.”

“I am,” she replies airily. Her sword strapped to her back is further evidence of her motive. “That dragon’s got nothing on me, baby.”

Michael pinches the bridge of his nose. He makes worrying about her look like a fine art, and Lindsay loves him even when he doubts her. “Do you have a death wish?”

Lindsay is still smiling, though she sobers when she replies. “My only _wish_ is to break my family’s curse. I’m tired of being stuck in the shadows. It’s not fair, and I can’t sit around and do nothing about it. I’m not some damsel in distress. I refuse to be in the shadows.” Her voice is filled with conviction, but even with how somber the subject matter is, she’s having a hard time feeling angry. Excitement has every part of her buzzing.

“Lindsay- Lindsay, wait, come on. You’re not in the shadows, you don’t even know what this curse _is_ , and this dragon is going to literally eat you. Think about that.”

“You’re with me or you’re against me,” sing-songs Lindsay.

Michael sighs like the entire weight of the world is on his shoulders. After a moment, he throws his hands up. “Fuck it, I guess. I’m sure as hell not letting you go alone.”

“Great! We’re meeting Jeremy by the river, and Meg and Gavin will be waiting at the edge of the forest. Ryan might be able to get away from his kingdom for a quick dragon slaying romp, but he said no promises.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“You know what I always say—the more the merrier!”

Michael, who had packed rations with him when he went to retrieve Lindsay like he knew this would happen from the start, shoulders his bag and bumps their shoulders together, one part admonishing and three parts fond, and the two of them walk together toward the river under the mild autumn sun.

/

The kingdom is beautiful this time of year. It’s full of rolling plains, still close enough to summer that the greenery is bright but well enough into the fall that it’s pleasant to be outdoors at any time of day. Lindsay doesn’t get a lot of time outside as a servant, mostly relegated to the kitchen or the underground passages so she doesn’t bother any guests of the castle. The King and Queen are kind to an extent, but Lindsay has always been certain she was destined for more. Estranged from her family, it took her years to get the truth out of Geoff, a nobleman in the kingdom who was present for Lindsay’s family’s exile.

“It’s a curse,” Geoff had told her, “that makes it so you and your kin are destined to lose every battle they fight. Nobility can’t remain neutral during wartime, so they were stripped of their titles.”

He refused to tell her anything else, so she’s taking matters into her own hands.

“That sword isn’t yours,” observes Michael a few hours into the journey.

Lindsay glances at him. “Are you going to duel me for it?” Honestly, she kind of wants him to agree; she could probably use the sparring practice.

Michael rolls his eyes. “I’m just saying, you could’ve asked.”

“And alert you to my escape plan? I would never.” Lindsay places a hand over heart as if scandalized by his suggestion.

“Right, like you didn’t know I’d come with you.”

She just smiles. At the time, it had felt like she really couldn’t risk it—Michael has a lot to lose if he gets caught with her, considering how tight the rules are about knights cavorting with castle staff, so it would be difficult to navigate even discounting his martyr complex and the ways she worries he’ll get himself killed on someone else’s behalf someday—but now it feels silly to have ever thought it could go any other way. Of course Michael is joining her on such an important adventure. Of course he’ll be by her side the whole time.

They walk for two hours more before the air starts to change. Near the castle it was dry and smelled like the fields, overturned soil and the occasional meadow flower, but over here it’s rich and wet with the lush earth by the river.

“There he is,” says Michael. Lindsay can’t really tell by the look on his face, but it sounds like he’s pleased.

On the bank, Jeremy is leaning against his frankly ostentatious glaive, a huge weapon that Lindsay is impressed he can wield with any kind of grace. She’s seen Jeremy in battle, though, if only from afar, and she knows what he’s capable of. “You made it!” she cheers, once they’re in hearing distance of each other.

“I did,” calls back Jeremy. “You brought Michael!”

“She did,” answers Michael, shaking his head like he still can’t quite believe the situation he’s gotten himself into. “How long were you guys even planning this?”

Jeremy laughs. “Long enough.” He pats them both genially on the shoulder as they get close enough, and at this distance Lindsay can see that he has a black eye, and his pack is looking a little worse for the wear. She doesn’t ask yet, but there must be a story there, and she’s very, very curious. 

Michael is still grumbling about something as they all set off again together. Lindsay and Jeremy initially met through Michael, actually. Jeremy was new to knighthood, and took a shine to Michael pretty quickly. Michael ended up taking a shine to him right back, and Jeremy began popping up around the castle more often when they weren’t both off doing knightly things in other kingdoms. He took up watch when Michael and Lindsay stole some time away together against castle rules, and never once let Lindsay apologize for the inconvenience. Over time, she and Jeremy became good friends with or without Michael there as a buffer.

When Lindsay decided to slay this dragon, Jeremy was the first person she went to for support and help, and he’s never been anything but on board with the plan from that first decisive moment.

They don’t make it to the forest’s edge before dusk. Lindsay lays out her bedroll and helps Michael get started on a fire. If she stays very still and listens, she can hear the whistle of Jeremy hunting, where he’s off in a field nearby shooting birds out of the sky with the longbow he borrowed from Michael. 

The sparks from the flint light the kindling, and Lindsay cups it with her hands and coaxes it with her breath. “There we go,” she says.

Michael feeds some twigs to the flame, then some bigger sticks when it seems healthy enough to accept them. “Been a while since we did this.”

“Yeah,” murmurs Lindsay. She’s still looking at the fire. “Remember when we almost burned down the wheat fields?”

Michael rolls his eyes “They didn’t almost burn down. It was fine.”

Lindsay shrugs. She remembers a lot from that night, how the flames flickered across both their faces, how they were laughing, how the blaze got too big too fast and they had to put it out with a bucket of water from the barn, which Lindsay refilled the next morning before sunrise. It feels like a big moment, takes up a lot of space in her memory.

They tend the fire quietly together for a few more moments before Jeremy returns with three pheasants. He’s already defeathered them, and his butchering knife looks wickedly sharp in the firelight. “Caught dinner!” he announces cheerfully.

Lindsay smiles and pulls a few biscuits out of her bag, unwrapping them from the fabric of her cheapest dress. “Here, we’ll eat them with these.”

“Awesome,” says Jeremy, skewering the meat onto a thin branch. “And then we’re sparring, Lindsay.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“I’ll be judging, I guess,” says Michael, and he doesn’t sound like he’s jazzed about it, but he’s also not protesting. It’s a win, Lindsay is pretty sure. 

They sit huddled by the fire as they eat. The breeze is cool, cutting through the warm air, and Lindsay wraps her cloak more tightly around her body. Jeremy and Michael are laughing about their latest quest, where the grail they went to retrieve ended up being made of bronze instead of the gold they were promised. At the time, Lindsay remembers Michael being distinctly annoyed, but they both seem to be amused by the whole thing in hindsight. Lindsay is content to sit and listen, can feel the small smile on her face as she watches their exuberant retelling.

After dinner is finished, she unsheathes her sword and takes a fighting stance. “I was promised a fight,” she tells Jeremy.

“You sure were. Michael, you wanna call it?”

“Sure. Go,” says Michael drily.

Lindsay sits lower in her squat, narrowing her eyes at Jeremy. They haven’t fought against each other before. Lindsay mostly spars with Jack, when the other man indulges her, or Michael when he’s in a particularly bouncy, energetic mood. She knows from watching that Jeremy relies on power over agility, but she hasn’t experienced it for herself.

The first time their swords clash, she almost loses her grip. She shouts, yanking her weapon back and resettling into her stance. Jeremy grins. Okay, she thinks. Can’t let him get any good hits in, or she’ll end up losing her weapon. She focuses more closely on her footwork and darts toward and away from him, jabbing where she can and trying to knock his weapon loose when she can’t. 

Jeremy mutters something that sounds a lot like, “Hold still,” swinging his heavy glaive and making her work the angle to make sure it doesn’t connect straight on.

She laughs, feinting at his shoulder and going for his knee instead, and it’s so successful she has to pull back before she does real damage. “Yield,” says Lindsay.

But Jeremy is not a knight for nothing. “I never yield,” he tells her, and the way he waggles his eyebrows is playful but his tone is completely serious. She practically sees the gears turning in his head, and he starts to fight more patiently, waiting for her move and counter-attacking when he gets the chance.

She adjusts her own strategy to match, and they spend the next few minutes trading blows that send vibrations rocketing up Lindsay’s arm. She’s getting sore. Sweat beads at her temples and trails down her face, cooled by the breeze that saps the warmth of the day from the air. 

Jeremy's grin is ferocious, and Lindsay wants to _win_. She knows she can't ruin him for real, but it doesn't stop the wanting, a fiery pit in her stomach that makes her hands itch. There is a capacity for violence in her that may never be fully realized, and part of her weeps for it. "Yield," she says again, parrying his blows and dealing more of her own.

The swords sing against each other.

Jeremy just laughs. He's reckless with his next attack, and before she knows it Lindsay has deflected it and pointed the tip of her sword at his Adam's apple. "Yield," she says one more time.

If she tried to finish it—if Jeremy were a foe and not a friend, and she went the extra effort to slash a thin scarlet line across his throat—this fight would end differently. She would careen backwards, landing on her tailbone, disarmed, a shockwave firing through her body. It’s happened before, just a few times. Like this, however, she can win for long enough to pretend it’s real.

"Fuck," says Jeremy, but he doesn't look angry, just rueful. "Michael teach you to fight like that?"

"I wish," offers Michael from the sidelines. He's smiling, too, probably caught up in the adrenaline of the match. 

Lindsay pulls her sword back and sheathes it again. "I mostly practice with Jack, but I first learned from Ryan, actually," she says. “He made a lot of visits out to our kingdom when he was a prince.”

Jeremy’s eyebrows raise in surprise. “He talked to you? Not that—”

“No, it’s fine. Ryan is a lot friendlier than people give him credit for. I dropped a plate when serving dinner during one of his trips, and I had to sleep outside for a week as punishment. He found out about it and brought me bread and a blanket. I guess he knew something about being cast away, even that young.” They had become fast friends. Ryan is much kinder than many reports make him out to be, and while Lindsay knows his reputation keeps the border peaceful, it also frustrates her to know how easily people fall into its trap, even those who know Ryan personally. “Anyway,” she continues, setting out her bedroll, “he’s an adept swordsman, and I learned a lot from him on his visits.”

Jeremy nods. “And you never tried to become a knight? You’re a natural with—”

Lindsay snorts. A knight. God, what would the crown think if they heard her thinking like that? Until they’re done here, it’s nothing more than a useless daydream. “Jeremy, why do you think we’re on this quest?”

He has the good grace to look embarrassed. “Oh. Right.”

“Let’s get some rest,” interrupts Michael. “I can take first watch if you two want to sleep.”

“I’ll take it,” says Lindsay. She’s still too amped up from the fight. This friendly victory is the closest she’s come to defeating anything in years, and her senses are all sharp with adrenaline. Her arms are tired, and they’ll surely be sore in the morning, but Lindsay doesn’t mind. It’s another day’s travel at least before they find Gavin and Meg, and a few more days after that before they get to Ryan. There’s plenty of time to reacquaint herself with the thrill of a good, hard fight. There’s nothing like it, after all.

Michael and Jeremy acquiesce, and the quiet landscape is accompanied by the rustling of their bedrolls and their murmuring to each other, probably figuring out who will watch second. Lindsay tunes them out.

She’s never been this far from the castle before. She was raised into minor nobility during her earliest years, and can only remember snatches of it. When she was six years old, she transitioned to castle staff, running small errands and playing around with the young knights in training. She got into a lot of trouble then, nearly enough to get her cast out, but her status as an orphan (by name, if not by technicality) afforded her more leniency than she likely deserved. With what little sway Geoff held in the royal court, he supported her as well, and she grew into a talented, if mischievous, servant of all trades.

Before this, she had only made trips to nearby farms, a few hours by foot at most, and carried back baskets of vegetables and racks of rib meat to be salted and cured for the long winter. There, the land was tamed, beaten into productivity.

Here, the grass is long, the earth rich and damp. In the distance, the forest at the base of the mountain is so thick Lindsay can’t see any sign of what might lie waiting between its trees. 

The breeze whistles through her hair and disturbs her clothing, her thickest blouse and a borrowed pair of trousers. Meg had promised to sew her an armored breastplate. Lindsay can only hope it protects her, because the rest of her equipment will do little in that regard. For now, her most effective shield is Michael’s body, and the readiness with which she knows he would throw himself in front of her. She’s glad he came, but she also initially left him behind for a reason.

Her watch passes quickly. She sharpens her sword and watches the night darken the rest of the way, stars prickling up against the backdrop and washing their camp with a barely perceptible, muted light. 

Michael stirs after a few hours have passed, and he takes a hearty swig from his waterskin before walking over to where Lindsay sits. 

“Hi,” he says. He crosses his legs and sits beside her.

Lindsay smiles at his puffy eyes, the little lines on his cheek where some of the long grass had pressed into his skin while he slept. “Hello. Good sleep?”

“Mmhm.” It’s drawn out, lazy. “Stay up with me a couple minutes while I wake up all the way?”

“Sure.” Lindsay is tired, but not so tired she’d deny him that. “It’s beautiful out here.”

“I guess.”

She bumps their shoulders together, gently chastising. “At least look.”

Michael sighs like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and then goes quiet for a bit. “It’s nice,” he says, face tipped up toward the sky. He looks gentle. Lindsay knows his gentleness, loves it, but rarely sees it splayed so plainly across his features like this. “We travel a lot for the crown, but we don’t really get much downtime. It’s better like this, I think.”

“Yeah,” murmurs Lindsay.

Some more quiet. The grass rustles, and the flames of their torches flicker. Lindsay doesn’t know exactly how much time passes before he touches her knee, glancing, quick. “I’m good. Go sleep.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

He smiles, a little lopsided. “Goodnight.”

She smiles back, heads to her makeshift bed, and falls asleep almost as soon as she shuts her eyes. 

/

She wakes with the sun. Michael is asleep next to her, and Jeremy is standing a few paces from their camp, leaning on his glaive and looking out at the rest of the valley they still have to cross. From her angle, he looks at peace, unburdened. Everything is muted in shades of pink and orange, the sun only barely cresting up from behind the mountains.

Lindsay sits up, and Jeremy turns around. “Morning,” he says. “We should get going soon.”

“Yeah.” She stretches, and the soreness in her body after the fight yesterday is gratifying in a way that’s bone deep. They’re maybe three days at a hard pace from the base of the mountain, and then another climbing up. That’ll be made easier if Ryan ends up joining, since he’s usually the one with potions for that kind of thing, but either way Lindsay isn’t scared of working up a sweat.

They continue their journey after packing up quickly, putting their camp back together and setting out across the plains. 

Along the way, they don’t talk about the curse. Instead, Lindsay cajoles Jeremy into sharing the story behind the black eye he showed up with.

He laughs when she brings it up, touching at the edge of the bruising ruefully with his hand. “The last town we were in had a lot of stray cats. I saw this asshole kick one, and I kinda lost it on him. He was twice my size, probably, but I managed to scare him off after a while. His friends were freaked out when they saw me, I guess the look in my eye was kinda crazed.”

It’s remarkably easy to imagine Jeremy taking one look at an act of violence against an animal and rolling up his sleeves, no nonsense style. Lindsay feels herself glowing as she says, “That’s the best thing you’ve ever told me.”

“Alright,” says Michael, “break it up, jeez.”

“We have hours left before we get to Gavin and Meg,” counters Lindsay, “what’s a little flirting between friends?”

“That was not flirting,” says Jeremy quickly.

Michael just grumbles to himself, something about how much he has to put up with, and Lindsay loops her arm through his in appeasement. He lets her for a bit, then shifts away so he can scout ahead over the edge of the next hill.

“All clear!” he shouts, and the cycle reverts to the start. They press on.

/

It takes another day and a half of travel to make it to the forest. When they crest over the final rolling hill of the grasslands, the view steals the breath from Lindsay’s lungs. In the distance, gray and imposing, the Sharptooth Mountains stand proud. The line they cut against the vivid blue sky has Lindsay’s hand itching to grab her sword, the combination of beauty and danger sending a primal rush through her bloodstream. Its tallest peak holds her foe, and it feels more real than it had before. She’s going to kill a dragon. There’s nothing in the world that can stop her.

At the mountain range’s base, the lush forest spills out in waves. The leaves are deep green and yellow at the edges where they’ve been dappled by sunlight. The wood, Lindsay knows, holds all kinds of secrets; maybe she should be frightened, but she isn’t. How can she be? All she’s known for her entire life has been loss and frustration. With the chance of victory so close, and the sting of failure so intimate a friend, she has nothing left to fear.

When they reach the top of the hill, she pauses.

“You good?” asks Michael.

Down below, she can just make out the green and black flag of Gavin’s people, and two figures standing beneath it.

She tucks some hair behind her ear and takes a deep breath. “I’m great.”

He brushes a hand over her hip, just gently, and adjusts the way he’s shouldering his pack. For a moment, it seems like he’s going to say something back, but he just shakes his head and starts walking again, Jeremy quick to follow.

Lindsay walks right behind them, taking in the scenery. The grass thins the closer they get to the treeline, getting shorter and less unwieldy beneath their feet. It makes traversing the terrain easier, which is both convenient and dangerous, since they’re likely not the only creatures out here taking advantage of the gentler environment. As such, it takes but an hour more to reach Meg and Gavin. They’d set up a small camp under some of the smaller trees that mark the beginning of the forest. It appears as though Meg used some of her power to wind glowing cords of light magic up the nearest trunks, eliminating the need for fire altogether. 

By the time they make it down to the camp, Lindsay has also catalogued the faint sunburn across Meg’s face, and how Gavin’s boots, old and worn now, are the same ones he was wearing the first day she met him.

They all hug, some more enthusiastically than others, and Meg and Gavin set about cleaning up their camp so they can all continue on the journey together.

“I’m excited, honestly,” Meg is saying, waving her hand around. At her call, the rumpled sleeping bags roll themselves, and the pillowcases shake off the dirt and dried grass they’d accumulated. “You’re a badass, Linds, and it’s about time other people got to see it.”

“Thanks,” says Lindsay, genuinely touched.

Gavin makes affirmative noises in the back as he wrestles with the tarp they’d strung up in lieu of a proper tent, just enough to shield them from rain or excessive sun but not enough to do much else. “I’m glad you invited us along, it’ll be top.”

“ _It’ll be top_ ,” mimics Michael, making a face at Lindsay from over Gavin’s shoulder, but he can’t hold the fake disdain for long before he starts laughing.

Lindsay nods, quirking a smile of her own, and rescues Gavin from the tarp.

The camp gets packed up, and the five of them begin to walk into the woods. 

“I’ve never been in this forest,” remarks Jeremy. He’s looking around, head on a swivel, and it’s hard to tell if he’s looking for danger or just admiring the beauty of it all. Probably both. Though the forest is known to be, on occasion, the scene of disappearances and grisly deaths, it’s also undeniably lovely. The sun peeks through the leaves of the trees, scattering mottled sunlight across the grass beneath their feet. Some birds sing high up in the canopy, and Lindsay grins and chirps back at them just because she can.

Michael jabs her in the side for that. “We need to keep a low profile,” he says in his usual register, which is practically a shout.

She rolls her eyes. “Come on, live a little.”

“More like die a little,” chimes Gavin.

He and Michael complete a complicated movement that could be a high five or a handshake depending on how you look at it, and it involves a good deal of clapping.

Meg sighs long-sufferingly. “If there’s anything around that wants to eat us, it knows we’re here by now.”

“It’s fine,” says Jeremy, holding up his glaive with little effort and spinning it three hundred and sixty degrees. He looks like one of the dancers at the celebratory festivals held in the palace, except much more deadly. “Anything even looks at us the wrong way, I’ll stab ‘em.”

Meg waves a hand, and the glaive clatters from Jeremy’s grasp onto the ground. He nearly falls over trying to catch it, and Lindsay catches Meg hiding a giggle behind her hand. “Sure you will. You’re definitely the most capable of us.”

Jeremy squints at her. “Are you making fun of me?”

“She’d never,” says Gavin.

Meg just smiles angelically, and Jeremy looks suspicious but still confused enough that he drops it.

To meet Ryan on time, they have to pick up the pace, and all semblances of stealth are abandoned. They snap through twigs, shoulder through brush, and sing along to tunes Lindsay made up during long shifts scrubbing floors in the castle, each more nonsensical than the last, until the sounds of their giggling overpower the singing altogether. Michael spends a lot of the next day pretending to be annoyed, tucking smiles behind his hand, and then giving up the pretense and shouting louder than the rest of them combined.

It means that when they do finally reach the proposed meeting place, Ryan hears them long before they see him.

He is standing at the edge of the forest, where the trees thin and the mountain begins to jut up from the ground, dark, gray rock creating a suitable backdrop for Ryan’s black and gold robes. His crown, more ornate than ever, rests atop his head, and Ryan looks every bit the king that the commoners in front of him are so definitely not.

Ryan surveys them, then looks dramatically up at the mountain. “I didn’t realize you were trying to bring the dragon down here to you,” he says with a grin.

Jeremy kneels in his presence, and Michael looks like he wants to but just barely stops himself.

Lindsay, Meg, and Gavin just grin back. Lindsay steps right in for a hug, ignores Jeremy’s pained little gasp. “I’m glad you could make it,” she tells Ryan.

He hugs her back, unbothered by the lack of propriety the same way he always is. The tales call him mad, crooked, even _evil_ , but Ryan is just a good man who never bothered to adhere to the rules of the political game. It came back to bite his reputation, but Ryan doesn’t seem to care much, and so Lindsay doesn’t, either.

“I am as well. How was the journey?”

“Laughs on laughs,” says Gavin. 

Slowly, Jeremy stands up, still looking wary. Ryan gives him a once-over and seems to decide winning him over is more trouble than it’s worth, because he pauses just to hug Meg before looking over his shoulder at the journey ahead. “I brought climbing potions,” he says, “but even with those it will take the better part of the day to make it up. We should get moving.”

“Potions?” murmurs Michael to Lindsay.

She nods. That part of the legend—that Ryan dabbles in magic and has potions to enhance nearly any activity under the sun—has always been true. He pulls the potions from his pack, and they are a deep green with swirls of gold like sunlight peeking through the liquid.

“Gods alive,” says Michael, still quiet, and then squares his shoulders and steps right up to Ryan with a hand extended.

The rest of them follow suit, and after a moment Lindsay feels the potion taking effect, pouring strength into her arms and legs and seeming to increase her lung capacity. It never gets old. She loves magic, wishes she could do even a little bit herself. Instead, she’s cursed, and the only magic she gets to partake in is a kind that has ruined her family and left her more bruises than she can count.

It’s unfair, if you ask her, though no one ever does.

Meg jumps up and down a few times, testing her strength, and giggles at the difference she notices it. “I missed you,” she says, and it’s hard to tell if she’s talking to Ryan or the potion.

He shakes his head, rueful, and shoulders his pack before turning to the rest of the group. “Shall we?”

They shall.

/

Halfway up the mountain, Michael slips.

He catches himself, thankfully, but there’s a nasty scrape along his left side, and no matter how hard he works to push through it becomes obvious quickly that he can’t quite keep pace with the rest of them. Ryan offers a healing potion that Michael refuses, and then a potion of quickness that he refuses, too.

If they manage to keep the pace they started at, they’ll reach the peak by dusk. If they keep Michael’s pace, it’ll be well after sundown.

“I’m fine,” insists Michael through gritted teeth.

Lindsay’s hands hurt, blistered from gripping the rock, and it shortens her patience. “You’re slowing us down.”

Michael snarls a little. “You didn’t even want my help with this to start with.”

“Maybe I didn’t,” she counters.

“Fine!”

“Fine.”

“Guys?” Gavin sounds strained. “Maybe now’s not the time for couples therapy.”

Jeremy laughs nervously. “That doesn’t sound like therapy.”

“Fuck off,” says Michael.

Ryan, at the front of their group, ignores them, continuing to pick his way up the face of the mountain. Initially, they got respite with some flatter sections, but it’s only getting steeper the higher they go. It’s requiring most of Lindsay’s focus to stay on this mountain and keep moving forward, and because of that she has none to spare for kindness or gentleness. The anger in her stomach is easy, and Michael with his hot head makes such a good target for it.

“We’ll just see you up there,” she says, speeding up.

To her left, Lindsay can see Meg hesitate. “Should we really split up?”

Michael sighs so theatrically that Lindsay can hear him from way over where she is. “Just go.”

And so they press forward, and Michael falls behind, and the rest of them crest to the peak just as the sun is beginning to set, casting shadows across the valley before them.

Lindsay, argument forgotten, wipes the sweat from her brow and catches her breath. It’s impossible to be angry with a view like this. The entire forest has been set aflame by the orange light, and it looks like a burning ocean beyond that, where the field rolls and tugs at the sunset. In the far distance, just barely visible to the naked eye, lies the castle.

Lindsay has never been this far from the castle before.

“It’s beautiful,” she says, mostly to herself, awed and hushed like a child.

Meg wraps an arm around her waist, leaning a little on Lindsay out of exhaustion. Lindsay holds her up as best she can, and the two of them stare out over the kingdom where Lindsay learned to wield a useless sword for the first time, learned to walk, to run, to hide from danger and to run right into it. She has always been the type to dream about something more. She never had the courage to pursue it before now, and even the thought of returning defeated tastes bitter on her tongue.

They set up a little camp to wait for Michael. From here, the mouth of the cave is merely a hundred feet of walking away, but the path curves so they can’t see it—and, with any luck, they’ll be able to sneak up on it. They talk little, instead doling out rations and tending to their sore hands and feet.

Finally, as the sun sets below the horizon, Michael crests over the edge of the cliff, and something in Lindsay goes cold looking at him.

His face has been cast with a grayish pallor, too pale, and the set of his jaw is tense with exertion. His breathing is shallow, his eyes pained, and guilt slams Lindsay in the chest.

She rushes over to him as quietly as she can, helping him over and sitting him down, and he lets her. The fight seems to have gone out of him, too.

“What happened?” she asks him, hands hovering over his body. She doesn’t know where to start.

He lifts up his shirt, and the scrape across his side, now hours old, is red and inflamed. “Probably should’ve accepted the healing potion,” he mutters ruefully, and the words are tinged with something playful but he doesn’t smile at all.

“Ryan,” calls Lindsay, trying to keep her voice down through the worry clouding her senses. She knows, objectively, that he’s dealt with worse as a knight, but she’s never had to see it before. At her call, the others look over more closely, concern dawning on their faces as well. “We need one of those healing potions, please.”

Ryan fumbles around in his bag for it while Gavin walks over. “Boi, you all right?”

Michael huffs a laugh. “Oh, yeah, I’m great.”

“You look it.” Gavin sits down behind Michael, putting them back to back, giving Michael something to lean against. He doesn’t say anything more, instead fiddling with his scarf, and Lindsay feels a surge affection for him, and for this little group they’ve formed, and the people around her who love each other and believe that she’s not just chasing a fantasy. Or, that if she is, they’ll be by her side while she does.

Ryan brings over the potion, which Michael drinks. It appears to help stitch the wound closed, but the area remains hot, inflamed.

“Ryan?” asks Lindsay.

Ryan frowns. “I hadn’t tested it on infections yet. We’ll have to see if anything changes in the next half hour or so.”

Michael finishes off the potion and grimaces, wiping a hand across his mouth. “We can’t wait another half hour. I already slowed us down enough. Let’s just go.”

Meg, from where she’d been slowly inching over, laughs disbelievingly. “Do you think you’re invincible?”

“I’m a knight. I don’t have to be invincible, I just have to be strong enough to protect my kingdom. You all—well, most of you,” he amends, cutting his gaze toward Ryan— “are part of that, and I’m not letting you go in without me. I know every second we wait here means the dragon might ambush _us_ instead of the other way around, and I’m not fucking risking that either. So someone help me up, and let’s just do this.”

Quiet for a moment.

And then—

“Hear, hear,” says Jeremy, reaching out to lend Michael a hand.

Lindsay still has a bad feeling about it, but Michael is a stubborn fuck, and she’s tired of waiting, too. She’ll do what she can to keep him safe, since this is her fight, but he won’t let them do it if they don’t do it his way. She’s known him long enough to know that.

“We need to play it smart,” she says, as the group begins to assemble. The concern and anxiety are being replaced in their faces by anticipation and drive. “And the killing blow is mine. Understood?” They’re going to do this, and the fact seems to lift the four of them the rest of the way to excitement.

It buoys Lindsay, too. They’re going to do this. Nothing will stop them.

She gets four nods. They hoist up their weapons and walk toward the mouth of the cave as one.

/

The dragon is asleep.

Its immense body, red-scaled and glistening in their meek torchlight, moves gently with its slow breaths. It is larger than any living creature that Lindsay has ever seen, and she freezes at the sight of it.

“What do we do?” whispers Gavin.

Lindsay understands his confusion. It seems poor form to attack a sleeping creature, dragon or not. In the stories Lindsay has read, has heard, the hero slays the dragon after it has pillaged a town, or killed her allies. The hero does not come into the dragon’s lair and slit its unconscious throat.

“We could wait,” answers Jeremy dubiously, “but that seems kinda dumb.”

“Kinda?” asks Michael, as acerbic as he can be with how woozy he looks. Lindsay has half a mind to go sit him down somewhere.

“Are we sure it’s asleep? It could be waiting to—” offers Meg, and that’s as far as she gets before one of the dragon’s eyes lazily blinks open, and the creature appears to smile at them.

“Oh, fuck,” says Jeremy.

_Fuck, indeed_ , thinks Lindsay, but there’s no time to say anything before the dragon puffs up its chest with a bellow and releases a stream of fire toward where they’re all clumped up like idiots at the entrance to its lair. 

They scatter like mice, diving this way and that to avoid the flames. Lindsay, toward the front, feels the fire scorch at her clothes, but she barely feels any pain through the rush of adrenaline. She rolls, lands in a crouch, and shoves her sword back out in front of her, ready to attack. She runs through what she’d learned about dragons before coming here, both from people who had seen them and the books she was forbidden to read in the library: their scales are thick, so it’s best to aim between them; piercing is more effective than wildly slashing; dragons are incredibly intelligent, and to underestimate them is to play into their hands; and killing a dragon often takes a village.

They were caught off guard, sure, but Lindsay knows more than she should, so maybe it balances out.

The dragon’s eyes are bright, awake, calculating. It growls, voice resonating and sending vibrations through Lindsay’s rib cage.

“Game on, motherfucker!” yells Lindsay in return, and she charges right for it.

In her periphery, she sees nearly all of her friends do the same. Only Gavin stays back, wooden wand beginning to glow as he chants to it, some gibberish that only works because he believes that it will—something like that, at least. Lindsay makes a note to pick his brain about it later when she’s not in the middle of life-or-death combat.

Meg manages to get her hands on it while the dragon is busy fending off Ryan’s mace, and she sends a pulse of cold energy through it, scales around her hands freezing over and beginning to chip off. As that happens, Michael, with a great roar, brings his sword up into the dragon’s abdomen, connecting well enough that he is coated with blood almost immediately.

Lindsay joins the fray then, narrowly ducking one of Gavin’s spells, which just bounces harmlessly off of the dragon’s hide. She can hear him cursing as she aims for the soft spot between two of the scales on the dragon’s hind leg, the highest she can reach from her position right now.

It slides in, and she twists, rage coloring her vision.

The dragon wails and swings its tail around, knocking Jeremy off of his feet before he can connect a hit, and he careens into Meg, effectively stopping her from continuing to freeze the dragon’s scales.

“Lindsay!” yells Ryan. “Do we have a plan?”

Lindsay rolls again, this time to avoid a claw swipe. “Kill it!”

“That’s not very specific!”

Gavin breaks from his cursing to squawk as another stream of fire aims for him, and lights his coat. “A plan would be great!” he shouts, batting quickly at his robes in an effort to put them out.

Meg moans from where she’s half-slumped against the wall. It’ll take more than that to put her out of commission—Lindsay hopes, at least—but she looks bad off.

Meanwhile, Michael dances back to avoid being bitten in half, and leaves his sword in the dragon. Weaponless, he throws his hands up as a last defense and takes a claw swipe that digs terrifyingly deep lines into his palms and skids him back a few more feet.

Lindsay stabs again, this time higher, toward the joint of the leg, and just barely hits skin before she’s forced to duck yet again. “I don’t know!” she yells back. “I was kinda hoping this would be easier!”

Jeremy is already up and swinging by the time Ryan processes the answer. 

“Let’s cut its head off,” Jeremy suggests.

“Retreat?” offers Ryan simultaneously.

“No retreating,” answers Lindsay, because she can’t go home without a win. She won’t, even if it ruins her.

Lindsay’s curse is almost definitely unbreakable, and she has plans to prove it. Those plans may be vague, but the castle feels more like a prison with every day that passes, and Lindsay wants a _home_. This is the first step toward making that happen. She can’t let it slip through her fingers.

As she racks her brain for a more suitable plan of action, Gavin manages to blind the creature with a burst of magic, and the tide begins to turn.

A slash, a stab, a _crunch_ of scales as Ryan’s mace finally connects. It’s all dizzying adrenaline, choreographed chaos, and Lindsay is on top of the world as she cleaves a claw straight from one of the dragon’s feet. Meg gets up close and starts getting spells off again, and Gavin keeps firing reliably from behind. It’s a good system, and they keep getting lucky, and the melody of victory begins to sing in Lindsay’s veins. There is nothing like a good, hard fight. There is nothing like reclaiming a legacy that never should have been stolen in the first place.

And then, like the universe remembers all at once that Lindsay is not a woman who wins, Michael collapses.

She hears it before she sees it, a quiet thud behind her that she almost misses were she not so attuned to him. Her stomach drops with him, and her hands go numb even before she turns and finds him prone on the floor, eyes rolled back in his head.

_Do you have a death wish?_ he’d asked her, and she’d laughed it off like a joke.

Now, she can’t help the sound that rips from her throat. The dragon is beginning to blink away its blindness, and she and her friends all show the wear and tear of the fight. The dragon looks weaker, yes, but it’s not dead yet, and Lindsay wonders if she really is willing to risk lives for her own benefit.

There’s no time to think. She rushes to Michael’s side, dropping her sword, and wills some kind of magic into her hands. A way to slow time, maybe, or a way to heal.

But her hands remain hands, not magic wands, and Michael is still far too pale beneath them.

“Lindsay!” yells Jeremy, hoarse from all the shouting they’ve been doing. “Look out!”

She looks up to find the dragon’s last good foot careening toward them, claws extended and dripping with blood from the fight.

No time to think. No time to worry, or wonder, or even hope.

Lindsay doesn’t know what part of her it is that makes the decision, but she throws both hands out in front of her, a last desperate act—

—and a shield of shimmering magic bubbles out around her and Michael.

The claw slams into it, sending an electric pulse through Lindsay’s body, but the magic holds fast, and Lindsay holds her breath as Michael begins to stir.

“Linds?” he asks, groggy and confused.

She shushes him gently, focused on this shield, trying not to panic that she doesn’t know how it works or why this is happening now.

Outside of the bubble, Ryan grimaces against another hit, and Lindsay has no idea what she’s doing.

“Retreat!” she shouts to them. “Retreat! Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

It takes a few tries before they even hear her, but when they do, not a one of them protests, not even Jeremy. 

When Lindsay tugs Michael to his feet, he moans, and she ignores it as they make their way for the stairs that lead away from the lair. The shield, thankfully, moves with them, and she finds she can tug on it like a phantom limb, can shape it and move it as she likes. And thank the gods, too, because the dragon charges for it, throwing its body against the shape of her magic.

It holds, but only barely.

Meg and Gavin slip out first, up the stairs and away, and Jeremy and Ryan are quick to follow. Lindsay sends Michael with them, and turns back to the dragon.

“We’re leaving,” she says. “I’m sorry we came here. I wanted to prove something, but we shouldn’t have done it like this. Sorry about the stabbing, and stuff. You hit me back, so I’m not _that_ sorry, but still. We won’t bother you again.”

The dragon says nothing, but it holds her gaze.

“We cool?” she asks.

No response, but no attacks, either. It’s as good as Lindsay thinks she’s going to get. She holds the shield at the door for as long as she can, until she’s too far up the stairs to be able to feel it anymore, and retracts it to follow her instead.

She doesn’t hear the sound of footsteps in pursuit, or feel the lick of flames at her feet, and makes a note to get Michael or Jeremy to tell the knights not to fight this particular dragon.

Just outside the cave, her friends are waiting, each banged up and bruised and bleeding, and Lindsay brings the shield up around all five of them, not because she’s scared of being attacked but because of the weight of her guilt, how badly she wants to protect them from her own stupid, impulsive decision-making.

“Next time, let’s fight something a little smaller,” she tries, joking to lighten the oppressive darkness of the night. Her heart feels sick.

Jeremy laughs, first at the joke, then, it seems, at the entire situation. “Gods, Lindsay, you really don’t take baby steps, do you?”

Impossibly, the rest of them laugh, too, smiling and ribbing at her like she didn’t just get them all killed.

After a few moments, Ryan passes out his remaining healing potions and gestures to the back face of the mountain, which winds downward with a much more forgiving slope. “We can find somewhere to sleep, and then we’ll head the rest of the way back in the morning.”

Heading back doesn’t sound like the most appealing option to Lindsay, especially since she hasn’t had any time to process this adventure, but she figures that can be a problem for Morning Lindsay to deal with. “Sounds good.”

Michael nudges his way toward her, away from where Jeremy had been holding him up, and walks by her side, even as out of it as he is, for the entire hour and a half until they make camp.

/

That night, Lindsay takes last watch, and wakes up to find a much healthier looking Michael already up and at ‘em tending to the fire.

The others are sleeping, bedrolls laid out on the small plateau they’d found for this specific purpose, and Lindsay shivers in the night air before going to sit next to Michael, a mirror of their positioning just a few nights ago. “Feeling better?” she asks, voice croaky.

He nods. “Meg used some of her mojo on me, worked like a charm.”

“Good,” says Lindsay, with feeling. She’s still in that milky space between dreaming and wakefulness, which is the only reason she voices her next thought. “If you had died because of me… fuck. I don’t want to think about it.”

“If I’d died, it would be because of me,” he shoots back, though not as acerbic as he could be. “Don’t give yourself so much credit.”

Lindsay sighs, wraps her arms around her legs. “I was going to break my curse yesterday.”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t.”

“Probably not,” says Michael.

“I don’t know what to do. It feels like I gave up.” Mortifyingly, she blinks away tears. There was so much riding on that fight, and they had to flee because Lindsay didn’t think it through.

“You didn’t give up,” says Michael seriously, voice dropping to a range it doesn’t usually venture into. “Lindsay, you made a smart call. We trusted you to lead, and you did.”

Lindsay laughs a little, mirthless. “I almost got you killed.”

Michael rolls his eyes. “It would take more than that,” he says, like he wasn’t a good hit away from never waking up again. “I told you, I die on my terms, and no one else’s.”

“I’m serious. I didn’t know I could do that thing with the shield magic, or whatever it is. I had no plan, and I dragged you all into it with me.”

“You didn’t even invite me at first,” protests Michael.

Behind them, the others are tending to their wounds under the moonlight. Ryan appears to have rather handily won Jeremy over, and Gavin and Meg are off in whatever land they go to when they’re more or less alone. A bit away from the fire, they’re holding hands and looking at the sky, Meg absentmindedly weaving light through the scrapes and burns Gavin received in the fight.

The moon, waning, is maybe two or three nights from being new, and the sliver of crescent is enough to illuminate the gentleness of Michael’s features, the countenance he reserves only for those dear to him.

“This was still fun,” she says, holding it out like a peace treaty, because, despite everything it kind of was.

There is nothing like a good, hard fight, even if Lindsay will never win one. Maybe she doesn’t need to. Maybe there are a lot of things she doesn’t need, and just a few things she does.

Michael laughs, shaking his head. “And you’re still insane. I fucking love you,” he adds, more quietly, “near death experiences or no.”

Lindsay smiles, steals a kiss, and feels something settle within her.

Lindsay’s curse is almost definitely not unbreakable, but for now, Lindsay is more concerned with learning what else she’s capable of beyond the walls of a castle, magic or otherwise. With these friends by her side, and the way they pull apart and together like magnets, she imagines they’ve only scraped the surface.

Up above, the moon still shines, and Lindsay closes a fist around her borrowed sword with a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang w me on tumblr if you'd like, I'm empire-kids over there and I have a lot of feelings.


End file.
